“So she gave you her number?” Rider gives me a sidelong glance, a smirk on his face.
“She did,” I confirm.
He nods. “Well, that’s a step forward,” he laughs. “You couldn’t even get that back in school.”
“Still dining out on that, huh?”
“Always will.” He raises his glass of beer to me. “It’s not every day I get to see the great Sawyer West reduced to a flaming pile of ruin by a woman. And need I remind you, I got to see that repeatedly? Have to enjoy it when I can.”
“Glad you can enjoy my failings,” I note wryly.
He shrugs. “A little bit of schadenfreude never killed anybody.”
I chuckle as I take a long pull of my beer. I suppose I should take it as a compliment that Rider harasses me so relentlessly about not being able to close the deal with Berlin, simply because he doesn’t have anything else he can give me shit about. Generally speaking – be it business, or with women – when I go after something, I get what I want. I know some people think that makes me sound cocky or arrogant, but it’s not intended to be. It’s just a statement of fact.
“So you think you’re actually going to be able to seal the deal this time?” Rider asks.
“Have you ever known me to not get what I’m after?”
“You mean, besides Berlin?”
I laugh. “Walked into that one.”
“Yes you did.”
I lean back in the booth and take a long drink and think about Berlin. Back in school, I pursued her hard. To be honest, the chase was a turn on. It was new and exciting for me. Of course, coming up empty wasn’t the outcome I’d wanted, but there was nothing I could do about it.
But the truth of the matter is that it wasn’t just my desire to sleep with her that made me chase Berlin as hard as I did. I mean, yeah, I wanted to sleep with her. She was sexy as hell back then. But it was more than that, and I don’t think I even realized it until much later.
“She’s different,” I mutter.
“What was that?”
I drain the last of my beer and signal our waitress for another. She waves to let me know she’ll be over in a moment, so I sit back and wait.
“She’s different,” I repeat. “That’s why I pursued her as hard as I did.”
“Different how?”
“You remember – she’s always been so passionate,” I remind him. “She’s full of fire, and she’s tough. She takes zero shit.”
“Yeah, I seem to remember her almost beating the shit out of somebody who grabbed her ass once,” he laughs.
The memory makes me join his laughter. “I remember that. The guy looked shocked as hell that this pretty little girl was about to kick his teeth in.”
We laugh for a minute and recount some of the other things we remember about Berlin – as well as about our college days in general. Things seemed a lot less complicated back then. My main goal was just having a good time. I knew I’d eventually have to take over and run the company my father built but, I didn’t expect that to happen until I was much older than I am now. My father’s death changed a lot of my plans, and I feel like I’m still running to catch up.
“You really like Berlin, don’t you?” Rider observes.
“I don’t even know her.”
Rider turns to me, pursing his lips and gives me a considering gaze – a considering gaze I long ago dubbed the ‘X-Ray’. I hate it when he gives me the X-Ray because he can usually see straight through me, cut through all my bullshit, and get to the heart of things – which is annoying as hell. It makes it difficult to keep secrets from the guy – not that he’s right about Berlin. Just in a general sense.
“When you talk about her, you get this sort of dreamy gleam in your eye,” he says. “Come to think of it; it’s the same look you had back in the day.”
“What?” I wave him off. “That’s bullshit.”
He grins. “And you’re getting so defensive. I mean, look at the way you’re sitting there all hunched up and shit.”
Not wanting to give him the satisfaction, I don’t move – until the waitress arrives with a fresh round, and he looks away. I quickly sit up and correct my posture, so I’m not sitting there, as he said, all hunched up and defensive looking. When he turns back to me, I see the small smile cross his face as he obviously notices that I’ve changed position.
“I don’t know how I didn’t see it before,” he muses. “I usually see everything.”
“What are you talking about?”
“That you’re actually into her,” he goes on, “as like more than just a conquest.”
I take a drink of my beer and try to ignore him as I try to organize my thoughts. Seeing Berlin again after all these years definitely stirred up a lot inside of me that I wasn’t expecting. I need to take a minute to unpack it all.
I mean, it’s not like I was in love with her or anything like that. I didn’t know her well enough, even back then, so it’s nothing that complicated or messy. But there is definitely something there – something I didn’t see until it was too late to do anything about it, and something that I’ve never quite let go.
“She’s a beautiful woman,” I deflect. “I’m always into beautiful women.”
He laughs. “Come on, who are you talking to right now? You know I know you better than that.”
I give him a wolfish grin and take a drink of beer.
